Two major tech tales are headed to big and small screens in 2013, along with the Steve Jobs biopic "jOBS" starring Ashton Kutcher that is slated to hit theaters in April. The two upcoming additions focus on well-known controversies: one is a documentary about the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay; the other is Hollywood's take on WikiLeaks, the anonymous whistleblower website. It's fitting these two sites should get film treatments in the same year as both sites have raised serious issues surrounding the ethics and politics of distributing and sharing information online.
The Pirate Bay is infamous as a file-sharing site where users can download all kinds of popular, copyrighted content for free using the Bit Torrent protocol. Law enforcement has tried to shut the site down on several occasions, but have so far failed. At one time it seemed the site would be sold and turned into a for-profit machine. But after the finances of Global Gaming Factory, the company that wanted to purchase The Pirate Bay, were called into question, the deal fell through.
Whistleblower site WikiLeaks, meanwhile, is designed to expose leaked, secret documents from governments, corporations, and other large organizations around the world.
Both sites also saw their founders pursued by the law in recent years.Pirate cinema
On February 8, "TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard," a partly Kickstarter-supported documentary about the trial years of the world's largest file-sharing site, will premiere. The story starts in early 2009 as the Swedish trial against the four founders gets underway. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom were ultimately convicted of being accessories to crimes against copyright law.
It's not clear when "TPB AFK" ends in the ongoing saga of The Pirate Bay. In 2012, Warg attempted to evade his prison time by fleeing the country, but he was arrested in Cambodia in September and deported back to Sweden. Warg is serving out his prison sentence in Swedenand may face further charges for allegedly hacking Logica, an IT company based in Sweden. Director Simon Klose says he filmed The Pirate Bay crew from 2008-2012 for the movie.
In true Pirate Bay fashion, the documentary will see its debut at the 63rd international Berlin Film Festival with a simultaneous online free streaming event as well. You can also purchase digital copies of the film for $10; DVD copies will cost about $23. The film is being released under a Creative Commons license to allow people to freely remix and share the documentary.
"By sharing this film under a Creative Commons license, we hope to contribute to a serious debate about the social and economic benefits of sharing," Klose said in a blog post. "We also hope to prove that sharing can be a realistic business model."
"Away from keyboard" is a term The Pirate Bay founders coined as a substitute for the online expression IRL or in real life.